Vincent Wasney was told that after having three seizures aboard the Independence of the Seas liner and receiving a blood test and medication, he owed more than $2,500, which had to be paid before he could disembark.
There’s all kinds of what the fuck in this story, but this is the part that really gets me. How can they hold a person hostage like that? How does the cruise line management sleep at night knowing Florida man might be out there looking for revenge?
The hospital reduced the payment after learning he was uninsured? Is that like how itemized receipts make it cheaper because it’s all designed to shaft insurance companies who then just shaft their clients to not lose any money?
Also fuck the people who actually enforced that rule on the boat and anyone who would threaten their jobs if they didn’t.
Just another reason to avoid cruises, I guess.
The insurance companies want it that way, though. That’s the sneaky bit.
Insurance companies are legally required to pay out 85% of all money they take in back to their insured. That leaves them with 15% to cover payroll and rent and profit and all the other shit.
So by having medical expenditures stupidly expensive, they get to charge higher premiums, which means the 15% they get to keep every year is a much larger amount of money. Why have 15% of $1,000,000 when you can have 15% of $100,000,000?
Well that’s fucked up. Jesus.
This is America.
Most hospitals will remove the cost entirely if you are uninsured and make under a certain amount.
Example. My husband recently (…okay, 2 years ago, but the passage of time hurts) had to go to the hospital, and be admitted for, an infected insect bite. No cost on admittance. Had to stay a few days to be on ivs.
Over the course of the next few months we get the bills. Which we can’t pay. But we have the number for the part of the hospital that can lower the costs.
We give them all the information, then wait.
One day a lady drives up to our place, hands my husband a piece of paper saying he owes the hospital nothing, then leaves. It was surreal.
The lady that day: “You know, I rarely ever get to completely forgive someone’s debt. I’m gonna deliver it personally to see their reaction.”
We certainly weren’t expecting it to be delivered in person! Amazingly the letter also covered the next year if he had had to go back to the hospital (I think in case there were complications, which insect bites generally don’t have, but this was meant to cover a lot in case)
You know, Capitalism is a choice.
We can have capitalism and still have single payer healthcare. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Not with half of the country supporting whackadoo oligarchists, we can’t.
1/2 the country doesn’t though. We just have voter apathy because of our 2 party system
The first-past-the-post system created the two-party system. In order to fix the two-party problem, a start would be ranked-choice voting. Otherwise voting third party is literally dangerous because the worst people might get into office and fuck things up more.
RCV is what we need badly to help start fixing our problems in politics.
Personally I’m more of a fan of Approval Voting since it’s effective and the easiest to explain/implement.
Otherwise STAR voting is really good. Lastly I would take RCV since that is at least better than what we currently have.
Vote 3rd parties!
Yeah we should just let it ruin everything else.
People just use the word capitalism to refer to any economic practice they don’t like.
No, detaining someone on a ship until they pay you is not capitalism. Capitalism is based on free markets. Being imprisoned on a ship isn’t a free market.
This is however, a practice that results from the government being effectively corporate controlled. Which is the end result of allowing your free markets to run wild and allowing corporations to acquire that much power, money, and influence.
A pure capitalist system actively selects for this kind of bullshit. The most ruthless and unethical companies end up winning in the end. And those same companies are buying our politicians.
People blame capitalism when the system clearly favours the rich over the poor to such a dystopian extent that a man is allowed to be held hostage by a corporation
Yes. Free markets eventually degrade into centrally-planned systems.
That does not mean that centrally-planned systems are an aspect of capitalism, any more than a pile of decaying bones is an aspect of a family pet.
Free markets degrade over time. That does not invalidate their utility; it just means they are like all other phenomena in being temporary.
centrally-planned systems are an aspect of capitalism
Isn’t that the end goal of capitalism? Winning is having control of all the capital right? How can you divorce the implied, if not explicit, end goal of a system from the system itself?
pile of decaying bones is an aspect of a family pet.
How is this not an aspect? It’s the inevitable end of any living thing, much like capitalism and the heartless exploitation of literally everything
FTA:
"Under the cruise operator’s terms and conditions, guests are required to pay in full the expenses they incurred on their trip, and Royal Caribbean doesn’t accept “land-based health insurance plans.” The company advises guests to consider travel insurance before setting sail.
Mr Wasney and Ms Eberlein had neither health insurance nor travel insurance before they boarded their Caribbean cruise."
land-based health insurance plans.
How do I get a sea-based health insurance plan?
shorely you cant be searious
Take my upvote and get the hell out.
I think it’s called flood insurance.
It has a gold fringe
He also had a history of seizures as far as 10 years ago.
Shit I guess that means he should never be allowed to travel again…
No, it means you already know that you have a chronic medical condition and it shouldn’t be surprising you might need medical care on vacation and plan appropriately including buying travel medical insurance. This is just part of adulting.
You’d have to have your priorities seriously out of touch with reality to pay thousands of dollars to go on a cruise instead of buying health insurance.
Even if he HAD health insurance, it sounds like the cruise would have rejected it. They needed supplemental travel insurance, which I don’t think most people would consider for health related costs, more like “If I get sick and have to cancel…”
Not necessarily if you live in the US.
Sure, it’s really bad and risky not to have health insurance here, but also even if you have it, you’re mostly paying a premium to be denied care and coverage when you’re at your most vulnerable. It’s a truly cruel system and I don’t judge anyone who refuses to pay for health insurance here.
Cruises are absolutely not thousands of dollars for standard rooms, except for the ones that are like a month long.
The people from the article got the cruise as a gift.
You can practically get on a cruise for free if you live near the port and find special off season offers or subject yourself to half a day going through a timeshare sales pitch. Me and my SO did the timeshare pitch for two tickets to Disney world (all 4 parks) about 8 years ago plus a nughts stay at a hotel. Would cost us like $500 otherwise. A room for two on a cruise ship can go for peanuts. If the room is empty, it can’t make money. Even if you went on a cruise and never tried to spend a dime you didn’t have to, you’re still going to end up spending cash one way or another.
Gotta pay to play even if you hit the medical incident square in the game. That’s how it works. That’s exactly how all of this works!
